People across the United States and around the world suffer from a metabolic disease called diabetes. For these people who suffer from diabetes and taking insulin, a blood glucose meter is used at home to monitor their blood glucose levels. The blood glucose level in their blood is measured and monitored at different times of the day on a regular basis. The blood glucose meter works with a test strip and a lancet.
At the time of the blood glucose measurement, a test strip is retrieved from a storage container. The test strip is about ⅜″ wide and 1.5 inch long. The test strip has an electrical contact end and a blood intake end. The electrical contact end of the test strip is inserted in the meter to activate the meter. The lancet is then used to prick the finger and draw a droplet of blood. The blood intake end of the test strip sticking out of the meter is then touched to the finger for blood intake into the test strip. The meter, after a processing delay, provides a blood glucose reading in a display screen of the meter. The meter has logic to retain multiple readings and display them on demand and also transfer them to a computer for analysis.
There are about half a dozen companies that make blood glucose meters for use in both the home settings and in hospitals. These companies are Abbott Laboratories, Bayer Health Care, Life Scan, Roche, Nipro and Aga Matrix and they market many popular brands of blood glucose meters in different form factors. These companies also market the tests test strips that fit their meters as well as the lancets.
Typically, a blood glucose meter is 2 inches by 3 inches and ½ an inch thick in size. The lancet is like a pen about 5 inch long and around ½ an inch in diameter. The improvements by the industry in the prior art as described above have been to reduce the form-factor size of the meter device as well as improve the accuracy of the measurement. However, as illustrated in the Prior Art FIG. 1, the number of items and the steps required to measure the blood glucose levels have stayed the same.
It is the objective of the embodiments herein to make possible an integrated blood glucose measurement device that reduces the number of items a user would have to carry. It is also the objective to reduce the number of steps a user would have to perform and also to reduce the overall size of such an integrated blood glucose measurement device to make it easier to carry and use.